421–430 of 774 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think their point is that it doesn't really matter how competent the lower levels of the command structure are if the ones at the very top are bumbling fools unwilling to listen.
If you don’t have an objective, no amount of military might is going to get you there. This was the USA’s biggest mistake in Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Iran.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are a great many costs built into the system that this analysis won’t get you: mandatory useless ingredients, arbitrary standards, and pervasive regulations. I worked in aerospace and know a bit about this. Say you want to make a missile. Well, you better have the paperwork for literally every component to show that the metal used in all of it originates from a foundry in one of a tiny handful of countries.
That sounds superficially reasonable. The supply chain should be trustworthy and reliable.
It is funny to see the same story every time. It's all burdensome regulation by the nanny state until something goes very very wrong and the public wants answers NOW, at which point it's incompetent government getting led by the nose by monied interest groups and their public relations departments.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You think the US has shown itself as to be extremely competent in the Iran war? If you were talking about Iraq, that was completely different leadership.
How many lives has the US lost? What has Iran lost so far in the conflict with the US and Israel (a conflict which is not over)? The propaganda attempting to spin this as setting up as a strategic defeat for the US, is almost comical. As is, the US can stand-off and torment Iran for a very, very long time. $31 trillion economy. $94,000 GDP per capita (nearly 3x Japan for reference). The US can spend $100 billion annu…
And the reasons for bombing Iran are...?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, the problem is that nobody actually gives a fuck about this war. The reason we don't have industrial capacity dedicated to this war is because everyone knows we're fighting it for no reason, there's no plan, it stops and starts every 4 days, so on. Simple consequences of having actual stupid people leading our government. If the US got into a war that anyone actually cared about, it would almost certainly snap in…
Looking back at COVID crisis, the rate China vs US snapped to action when it come to PPE production is probably good glimpse into the disparity. I'm not sure we have done anything to improve this situation.
Every single manufacturer in the US stated plainly that they did not feel safe scaling up production, because the demand was always going to be temporary, and they didn't want to be left with unusable factories.
A competent admin could have worked with them to arrange for financial help to temporarily expand and not leave them hanging.
That's what happens when "The free market is the only one allowed to make resource distribution choices" hits reality. Sometimes all rational actors making rational choices will leave you fucked.
Ethanol did not have that fear, as the infrastructure for it shares a lot with other industries, and we scaled that production quickly.
It's just more examples of, again, the way the free market will respond to changes in demand is not always a good thing, and sometimes you do have to nudge the market or buoy producers to keep things running well and quickly respond.
The admin could also have, you know, not stolen the critical stockpile of PPE, given it to a business spun up by his family, and let them sell it for personal profit.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
On the flip side, at least the press is not hammering the Epstein files and the lack of any prosecution for the crimes documented in those.
Trump's Iran war is known as "operation Epstein fury" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactions_to_the_2026_Iran_war
"There's no such thing as public opinion, merely published opinion". While on the one hand we should never discount the impact of incompetence, gross negligence, or deliberate mismanagement there's a reason this story is circulating. For the most-dominant military power in the world to "whoopsy" run out of weapons because of a low-stakes engagement isn't readily believable. Suspicious me likens it to the supposed "wa…
Sadly, I find it very believable. To build them costs lots of time and money. To use them, not so much. Going low tech might risk more casualties in some cases - and so all the political problems that follow along from that.
We've also seen plenty of wishful thinking from the civilian leaders of the military. I'm sure that in their minds, each strike they launch is surely the one that will finally break Iran, better hit them with the good stuff, shock and awe.
They've also been purging all kinds of top military officers, presumably over culture war issues and insufficient sycophancy.
"There's no such thing as public opinion, merely published opinion". While on the one hand we should never discount the impact of incompetence, gross negligence, or deliberate mismanagement there's a reason this story is circulating. For the most-dominant military power in the world to "whoopsy" run out of weapons because of a low-stakes engagement isn't readily believable. Suspicious me likens it to the supposed "wa…
The cretins in charge of the country think the problem is that the soldiers don't have enough testosterone and have too much facial hair, and these people are capable of this next-level deception of the enemy? I don't think so.
Their idea of an army is the movie "300" - on oiled up, violent homoerotic phantasy. Soon, that's what's going to be actually left.
"There's no such thing as public opinion, merely published opinion". While on the one hand we should never discount the impact of incompetence, gross negligence, or deliberate mismanagement there's a reason this story is circulating. For the most-dominant military power in the world to "whoopsy" run out of weapons because of a low-stakes engagement isn't readily believable. Suspicious me likens it to the supposed "wa…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
(Not American, need to preface with this) I think the US military has shown itself to be extremely competent in the last war. Reading about Desert Storm and later the invasion of Iraq it's just insane. It's still possible they miscalculated how rapidly warfare would change, but to call them morons... As far as I can see, there are only three proven militaries in the world, the US, Israel and Ukraine, and the US is or…
You think the US has shown itself as to be extremely competent in the Iran war? If you were talking about Iraq, that was completely different leadership.
At the time of the Iraq war the US was holding all the cards. It had a perfected playbook, the optimal technology, and support from the population. In the Iran war the old playbook is ineffective, the technology is too expensive to keep it up, and the popular support for a war demanded by another country isn't there.
And yes... you have the current crop of leaders who couldn't lead their way out of a wet paper bag.